


Blank Canvas

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Series: Defined by Echo [7]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Scars, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Jon always thought of his scars-- and his skin, along with them-- as one of the few things he still had some measure of control over. Through the silence and the screaming and the running and the fear, his scars were his.His month with Nikola teaches him differently.Jon’s month with Nikola teaches him a lot of things. In some ways, the realization that his skin is not his own is the only one which matters.
Series: Defined by Echo [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646350
Comments: 17
Kudos: 129





	Blank Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, for the love/terror of whatever fear deities you may be involuntarily enslaved to, read the tags. Self-harm is the focus of this story.
> 
> On a lighter note, hope you like it and I love comments!

Jon comes home shaking and bleeding after _A Guest for Mr. Spider_. His grandmother notices, but doesn’t ask. Jon doesn’t blame her. He just heads up the stairs.

Sitting on the side of his bed, he inspects his cuts. He doesn’t remember falling, but he must have. His palms and knees are scraped like he fell, anyway. 

He fell. Surely, he fell. 

His left knee is the worst-- it’s covered in deep, bloody scratches. Jon stares. If he looks long enough, the cuts almost look like a spiderweb.

Jon throws up halfway through washing his knee out. He tells himself it’s because of the pain. 

The cuts heal, but the scars on his left knee don’t stop hurting. The pain is spiking and sharp, the way Jon imagines Mr. Spider’s legs must have felt when they wrapped around the man who saved his life. 

When he’s twelve, Jon is woken up by the scars burning. He bites down on his tongue to keep from screaming-- he can easily imagine his grandmother’s response to being woken-- and turns on his lamp.

The ridges of scar tissue on his knee moved. Jon no longer has to look closely to see the spiderweb. The beating of his heart sounds like knocking.

_Mr. Spider is waiting…_

Jon takes the pocketknife from his nightstand drawer and drags it over his knee with all the pressure he can force himself to use. 

The web doesn’t reform. His grandmother doesn’t ask about the bloodstains the next day. 

Mr. Spider teaches Jon that he can make the scars and the pain belong to him, no matter how he got them. It’s a lesson he takes to heart.

When Jon picks up smoking, he’s pretty sure it’s just a continuation of that habit.

Besides, it’s handy to have a ready source of flame. Burns are more dangerous, more prone to infection, but sometimes it’s all he has on hand.

Georgie is the only person Jon lets see the scars. She doesn’t ask, doesn’t let her eyes linger on them, and he doesn’t explain, is pretty sure this is what loving someone is supposed to feel like. 

When they don’t work out, Jon does his best to deal with the pain. The problem is he knows that it’s not just his and that there’s nothing he can do to help the one person he’s ever really allowed himself to care about.

Georgie teaches Jon why he shouldn’t let people too close. Georgie is a kinder teacher than Mr. Spider, but he keeps the lessons he learns from her just as close.

Jane Prentiss is corruption incarnate and the scars she leaves Jon with are merely another form of it. Sometimes, even long after they’ve healed, Jon is convinced he can feel the putrefaction of them seeping into his veins. 

One particularly bad night, months after the attack, Jon takes a knife to one of the craters Jane left him, thinking dimly that perhaps he can carve the rot out like a bad spot on an apple. He chooses one of the deeper scars to cut out, one that’s just above the crook of his elbow.

When he’s hunched over his bathroom sink dripping blood down the drain, Jon has enough presence of mind to realise that was probably a bad idea. Still, he didn’t hit anything major. And Jon feels almost cleansed, the same way he’d felt after effacing the web on his knee. He wraps gauze around his arm until the red stops seeping through and sleeps better than he has since the attack on the Institute.

It scars badly, of course. Jon knew it would. He probably should have gotten stitches, but then there would have been questions, and that’s the last thing he needs.

The thing which calls itself Michael leaves Jon with a neat, long laceration across his forearm. It doesn’t burn like the other scars entities have left him with, so it stays neat, even with the stitches.

“Had a disagreement with my bread knife,” Jon tells Martin, wishing he could have worn a shirt with long sleeves over his bandages. The lie comes out smoothly. Jon’s had a lot of practice excusing away suspiciously straight cuts. 

Tim calls, “You’ve had a lot of those from the looks of it, boss.” He’s looking at the scars criss-crossing Jon’s skin beneath Michael’s mark. 

Tim means the comment to hurt. It might have, once. Now Jon just bares his teeth in something far from a smile and says, “Yes. I suppose I have.”

Not much is his, anymore. But he still has his scars, even if they’re beneath other peoples’-- other things’-- claims now.

Jude takes his hand, and as he screams, all Jon can think is that he should have given her his left hand. There’s already several burn scars on his left arm, even if those burns were much neater than the ones he’s currently receiving.

Then comes Nikola. 

Jon’s always thought of his scars-- and his skin, along with them-- as one of the few things he still had some measure of control over. Through the silence and the screaming and the running and the fear, his scars were his. 

His month with Nikola teaches him differently. 

Jon’s month with Nikola teaches him a lot of things. In some ways, the realization that his skin is not his own is the only one which matters.

When he goes back to his flat, still reeking of lotion, Jon doesn’t reach for any of his various blades. He reaches for a bottle of whiskey instead.

Perhaps his scars were never truly his. Perhaps his mind never was either. 

This way he doesn’t have to care.


End file.
